IMPORTANT IRISH ART Monday 4 December 2023 at 6pm, Lots 1-133

60 37 Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978) SUR LE BORD DE LA FORÊT [ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST] oil on canvas signed lower left; inscribed with title in French and numbered [5] on canvas on reverse; also titled (in English) on Dawson Gallery label on reverse; a second label verso shows title in English, date [1961] and number [4] 30 by 25in. (76.2 by 63.5cm) Frame Size: 37 by 32in. (94 by 81.3cm) Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Whence purchased by Mrs Jamieson; Her sale, Thomas Adams, Blackrock; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Mary Swanzy, Voyages’, IMMA, Dublin, 26 October 2018 to 17 February 2019 Literature: Mary Swanzy Voyages, IMMA, Dublin, 2019, p. 135 (illustrated) Sur le Bord de la Forêt [On The Edge of The Forest] was included in the 2018 landmark retrospective exhibition - Voyages - at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), which described Mary Swanzy as ‘arguably Ireland’s first ‘Modernist’ painter’. In the Voyages exhibition catalogue the painting comes under the heading of ‘Surrealism’, a chapter which opens with a quote from The Times on 26 September 1934: “Miss Swanzy may be described as a Surrealist working in a Cubist Convention... the majority of her works look as if they were an illustration of a disordered dream.” There is a distinctly dreamlike feel to Sur le Bord de la Forêt. Similar to other works of this period c.1950-1960s the artist employs a technique of translucent layering of paint which allows the subject, in this case a nude female figure, to be both an entity in her own right but also inextricably linked to her surroundings as if seen through a veil. In his catalogue essay for Voyages, curator Seán Kissane examines Swanzy’s ‘brand’ of Surrealism within the context of her European contemporaries Max Ernest, René Magritte and Salvador Dalí in Paris in the 1930s, whose work can be described as “provocatively sexual” and how“...Many female artists distanced themselves from Surrealism because of what they perceived as its inherent misogyny, or because they were excluded from full participation by their male counterparts.” He continues, “Swanzy’s work at times can be described as feminist or gendered but almost never sexual... Naked female bodies are symbolist works like Au bord de la Foret [the present work]... but they have a dreamlike quality. The bodies are transparent and ethereal - not really of this world.” Sur le Bord de la Forêt, like most of Swanzy’s oeuvre, is a fusion of multiple influences. She did not just adopt a new style of painting when she encountered it, she absorbed it, digested it, took from it what most pleased her and created something far more personal and unique. Swanzy travelled widely throughout her life, she experienced different cultures, traditions, religions, art and histories all of which impacted her work and no doubt her outlook on life. When it came to interpreting, describing or titling her work she was often non prescriptive. Voyages notes, “Swanzy is interested in narratives, in story-telling; she is also very interested in how her pictures are received when they enter the homes of her collectors...As she said to Andy O’Mahony, ‘I’d like very much to be able to see what people have done with my paintings. I give my paintings names, because I’m told I have to for the catalogues. But I’d very much like to know how the people who have them have christened them, what they meant to them. It’s very interesting, to see how people react to certain pictures’.” In many ways Sur le Bord de la Forêt calls to mind Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus c.1484-1486 (Uffizi, Florence). The long haired, Classical nude, the scallop shell, the forest and water. Swanzy’s nude however appears seated comfortably within the forest, unlike Venus who stands exposed in a giant scallop shell on the water’s edge, and, in contrast to the Hora of Spring who rushes to cover Venus with a cloak, Swanzy’s female sits comfortably on hers allowing her chest to be fully seen and her long hair to rest behind her shoulders. She guards her shell, almost shielding it from the light which emanates from beyond the forest opening and waits cross legged and quietly confident. Between 1951 and 1968, when her Dublin Retrospective took place, Voyages catalogue notes there is no record of an exhibition for Mary Swanzy and little is known of her life during these 17 years. Her passport records she continued to travel visiting Switzerland, Germany and Italy in the early 1950s. Perhaps she visited the Uffizi during these years and the present work was the result of a “disordered dream” after Botticelli or, more likely, it is this viewer’s imagined narrative inspired by our shared ‘female gaze’. Adelle Hughes, November 2023 €25,000-€35,000 (£21,740-£30,430 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot37